The Nameless Quiet
by brasspetal
Summary: Somewhere in the in-between, there's a gap in the horizon where the sky meets the Earth / Snapshots of two people that survive by one another.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: The Dark Line**

* * *

Somewhere in the in between, there's a gap in the horizon where the sky meets the Earth.

Rick stands with it in his periphery, as all things but he knows it's there. That dark line.

Light still clawed its way along the hillside. Old tombstones and hallowed out trees greeted with silence. His tattered clothing and unkempt hair billowed in the wind as he shambled along the road.

There was something vicious in the woods, killing people in the next town over but Rick didn't pay it much mind. He wasn't looking for a reason to die, _not yet_. He _was_ looking for Daryl. Daryl, who was very much like the woods themselves. He held vines in his heart; wrapped up and overgrown.

The sun beat against his back, burning against his skull. The ends of his hair are wet with sweat. It was his natural state to cook from the inside out. One of these days, he's going to fall to the pavement and become ash.

The air smelled like something was burning, a forest fire maybe. It would grow wild and eat away the trees until a rainstorm smothered it. There was an old comfort in that.

Rick still had that old world hope that kept him from becoming a corpse and he thinks it has to do with the company one keeps. The longer you spend time with someone the more you mold together. It's the way of the things. The woods lived in Rick too as they did Daryl. Rick gave him a bit of that hope too.

They didn't speak much when they'd sit together but they didn't need to. There was a companionable silence that was more a comfort than most things were. Rick had never fit together like that with someone. He thinks of Shane and the person he was, left behind in the dirt. His thoughts like to remind him often of the people he's failed. He's gotten used to seeing faces in the dark of long dead ghosts. They don't frighten him, not anymore. All those people that live in his skull, as if it were a tomb, resting inside his head.

Rick knows Daryl sees Beth sometimes too. He's watched the darkened woods a little too long with an archaic kind of grief. He recognized it immediately, like looking in the mirror.

How many more years did they have of sitting at the side of the road with everything to say and no need to say it? How many more dead would voice their anguish at them before they too began to sing the same song?

It didn't matter. What mattered was the shoulder that brushed his and the belief that there was no use in dying, _not yet._

He didn't know how long his feet had carried him but the world was becoming blurry. There was a camouflage over the landscape and he tries to blink it away. He spotted Daryl in the trees and even though his back was turned, Daryl knew he was there. He would always find him, through the mud and misery.

In the deep creeping silence, Rick approaches Daryl, sweaty and exhausted. Daryl held up a rock, squinting with one eye towards the sun. It wasn't much of anything but he gave it to Rick like it was something worth holding onto.

It felt smooth, polished and Rick wondered how long Daryl had held onto it but he didn't ask. He never did, it was the way of things.

When they enter the thick brush instead of heading back, Rick thinks this is something to hold onto too. Time may not have treated them well but here they were, shoulder brushing shoulder.

It was the rule of inevitability and that comfortable awareness. Daryl nods at him once and the forest opens up for them, ready to swallow them whole. _This_ , this was their repose.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I plan on adding a few more snapshots to this if anyone is interested but for now I'll put this as completed.**

 **Chapter Two: Lying In The Dirt**

* * *

These are gone days, lost days, dog days.

There's a painful delight to the beating sun on his face and he wraps up the raw warmth in memory. Daryl doesn't much care for summers. More often than not, summer has always felt like he was trying to crawl through a bed of wet blankets. Daryl didn't much care for _anything,_ if he was being honest and he's always honest. People can pretend they want honesty but they are always waiting on the lie.

Others would shuffle in the other direction when he'd start to speak, as if his words were meaningless, less than nothing _. Now Rick_ , he'd look at Daryl as if he understood. He'd keep those silences close. He'd even poke the abyss by asking questions. It's satisfying that there's one person, in the many he's met, that he hadn't scared off yet. One person in the many, that assigns meaning to his life.

When it was the two of them in the woods, in the quiet dark, he wasn't less than nothing.

He'd sleep on his bed of leaves, skin snakes before the sun rose and he was never judged. Rick would eat with him in the silence and like wolves they would scavenge in the brush.

It was something Daryl looked forward to the most. These trips, these excursions they'd never plan but just _do._ They'd glance at each other, suffocating in Alexandria and they'd just head towards the gate.

There's something to lying in the dirt and looking up at the stars before sleep. He's never been much for words or pretty things but he thinks this comes the closest to fulfillment. Daryl would have laughed cruelly long ago, if you had told him that this was something he'd experience with Rick Grimes.

His chest was always full when they'd arrive back to Alexandria. He didn't know what to name it, the thing that lingered at the bottom of his throat. Perhaps, it was all the words he wasn't able to push out. He thinks most things are better if you can't name them. The nameless camaraderie, the nameless woods and the nameless quiet.

It's been happening more often. The trips to the woods, but they never comment on it. He wasn't about to. It just _was._

They keep the fire small and their movements quiet. There's nothing or no one in the woods to find them. He can breathe better in the wild.

Rick opens his mouth to speak but then decides against it. Daryl watches Rick figure out the right words to tumble out into the open.

"How long have we been doin' this?" Rick questions and his eyes find his beyond the firelight.

"I ain't keepin' a calendar or nothin'" Daryl says and tosses a small twig into the flames. He felt unusually frustrated. This _wasn't_ something they talked about.

Rick ruminates towards the ground as he often did.

"But why?" Is all Rick says.

Daryl wasn't about to entertain him with an answer.

 _Why_ was it that everyone had to assign a goddamn reason to everything? They should just let things be.

They don't speak for the rest of the night and the morning is filled with tension as taut as a bowstring. The way Rick is looking at him when they're packing their things up, made him glance the other way. There's a new intensity to his stare and Daryl couldn't handle that. Not right now. He felt disoriented, irritable, and pretty damn tired.

"Daryl…." Rick says and Daryl felt as if the trees were going to crash down on him.

"Let's go." Daryl throws over his shoulder, as he heads towards the pathway back to Alexandria.

He could hear Rick's boots crunching against the dried dirt. It should feel like it always does, it should feel like home.

How long has Daryl Dixon loved Rick Grimes? He couldn't really tell you. He just knew it one day and like all things, it stuck inside him like a needle under the skin. It took him a long time to reconcile it but there it was, walking behind him, crunching in the brush. All the meanings, all the reasons.

Rick finally catches up and walks shoulder to shoulder with him. "I'd like to keep comin' out here." Rick says.

Daryl's thoughts recede into abstract senseless patterns. He nods once, in the usual way that not many pick up on, except _him._

Daryl thinks that one day when they're both sitting by a dying fire, he'll tell him about the things that he stores within himself. He'll tell him about all the pieces he's given to Rick until the sun rose above the trees. There would be no expectations. He would just give him what he could never give anyone else. The last gleaming puzzle piece to the creature that is Daryl Dixon.

Alexandria waits for them like an unknown and neither one of them make a move to head there. They claim the little time they had left with the familiar silence and Rick lightly presses his shoulder to his.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: *Chapter title is part of a quote from the movie The Thin Red Line. These will continue to be snapshots.**

 **Chapter Three: Does Our Ruin Benefit The Earth?**

* * *

In Alexandria, there's always a clock ticking.

Rick sits in a quiet house that isn't his, and thinks he hears the _tick tock_ of a watch from somewhere. It's always far away and muffled. It's a reminder.

There was never enough of it. Time was a slippery bastard. So much of it slips through his fingers, like the daylight collapsing into night.

It was disorienting, like he was stuck on fast-forward somehow. People are changing, dying and distancing. They're all slipping out of his fingers too. Except Daryl.

Daryl is a constant, a statue to ward against time.

One of these days the dead that walk along the horizon, will climb inside his skull, and eat away what's left. They'll devour Alexandria. Rick knows this, yet he stays.

 _Where would they go?_ Would they wander aimless along the divide like they do?

 _Tick. Tock._

The crows are squawking violently outside, they're hungry too.

Carl steps inside then, slamming the screen door shut and he glances at Rick.

"Daryl is looking for you."

* * *

There are moments that Rick thinks that nature was just being nature. All the laws thereof. There's a savageness to the vines that wrapped themselves around everything. It's as if nature had waited eagerly for their extinction.

Daryl and Rick find an abandoned shack in the middle of the woods they've yet to explore. It just sat there, torn up to pieces by the plants invading the inside.

There's a white flower growing by the window sill that reminded Rick of the Cherokee roses that grew in Georgia. He knew it makes Daryl think of Sofia. Sofia who trusted them to find her; forever lost in those woods.

Daryl taps Rick's shoulder and points to the trees. There's a hawk soaring overhead looking for rodents. Its shadow passes over them and they watch it until it disappears behind leaves, stretching upwards towards the sky.

Rick's hand bumps against Daryl's purposefully. He didn't know how to do this. Daryl doesn't move away and Rick grabs Daryl's wrist as if he's going to tell him something but there was nothing that needed to be said right now.

His fingers wrap around his wrist bone, always meant to fit, _exactly there._

He can feel Daryl's pulse against his finger tips and it was quickening at a calm pace.

They part a moment later and enter the abandoned shack.

There isn't much to look at but it would be a place to eat and listen. A place to listen to their breathing in tandem and the shuffling of their comforting movement.

It rains and it's one long downpour. The wind is beating against the wood as if it could crack apart but they didn't pay it no mind.

"The crows are gettin' angry." Rick says and he doesn't know why he says it.

Daryl chews on squirrel meat, holding up a small knife to stick into the wood beside him. He passes some to Rick.

"They're eatin' nothin' but dead flesh." Daryl comments and Rick nods. He guesses he'd be angry too. There's a moment that they just catch each other's eyes from across the fire, just long enough to set Rick off balance.

The growing _something_ between them has yet to lessen. It just kept getting bigger, filling his head with nonsense.

Rick rubs his chin like he has something thoughtful to say but nothing comes out of his mouth.

Daryl's going to be the one to say something this time but the comforting warmth was cut short with a garbled wail.

A few walkers pile up in the rain, tripping over themselves in the mud. Rick and Daryl both stand from the fire, weapons at the ready.

There are more of them then they originally thought. Once their outside, and fighting with two of them, more decide to join the foray. Daryl's quick about dispatching a couple with his crossbow. Rick can hardly see. The rain was so heavy and they are soaked through. They send most of them back into the Earth. This is their rhythm, their dance. There's a synchronicity to their movements. The woods wanted this for them both. They fight together like their something from myth. Those stories weren't told any longer, so they had to be creatures within them, come to life.

Once the walkers are finally gone, Rick turns to Daryl, soaked and bloodied. They stand there like two halves of something greater.

Their breathing is loud when they enter the quiet shack, and they lean against the wall inside to catch it.

"Think we'll ever run outta em'?" Daryl asks and he bends down to get something from his bag.

"The dead?"

Daryl doesn't answer and he pulls a dry rag from his bag. He walks over to Rick and Rick expects him to hand it to him, as one of those quiet kindnesses but he doesn't.

Daryl takes the rag and begins to wipe the blood from Rick's face. It startles him at first but he doesn't move away. Rick just stands there, still, and Daryl seems as comfortable as ever, as if this is routine.

The gesture makes him whole. Rick closes his eyes against it. There's a moment of clarity; his thoughts coming together. This is all he was, assembled and reassembled.

Rick opens his eyes and gently grabs Daryl's wrist, as he did in the woods earlier. They stand there and the comforting quiet gives way to something new. Daryl is staring straight at him with what appeared to be open affection. Anyone else might not recognize it but he does.

There's lightning and thunder cracks, breaking them apart.

Rick Grimes had given Daryl Dixon what was left of his heart a long time ago. Daryl had kept it safe in the pulse beneath the flesh of his wrist.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: What's Deserved**

* * *

The roadway is a crumbling artery, scarred and ripped open.

Daryl is standing with the forest brush, as if he's becoming a tree. His shoes would take root against the roadway if they could, but the crows warn him that something is _wrong._ Daryl can feel the change in the air, like something invisible.

Rick had gone on ahead as he sometimes does and Daryl followed his footsteps; followed the crows. It's then the worry set in, like something snapped loose inside him.

This is fear. The kind of fear that rises up out of nowhere. The kind of fear that stopped him dead in his tracks against this torn up roadway. Rick is standing out in the wide open and a woman, who looked to have crawled out of the mud, is pointing a pistol at him. She's shrieking at Rick, crazed. She wants what he has on him. She wants his bag, his boots, his life. She hasn't noticed Daryl. Not many people do, especially when he wants to blend in.

There's a desperate rage about her, the kind that develops over time; grown from grief. Daryl didn't spend much time brooding over who was who and what others deserved. He doesn't care about this woman's story or her struggles. All he cares about is the simplicity of her actions. She's going to shoot. She's going to destroy two existences in one gunshot.

The crows caw louder and remind him that they're bound by something changeless. They know their fate is lined with an inevitable miserable end but it wasn't here. This isn't _it_.

The decision was already made when he walked on the muddy path towards the dread.

He holds up his crossbow and fires.

She collapses limp, lifeless, almost soundless. Rick is standing there startled into silence, looking straight at Daryl, as if he always knew he'd be there. The crows knew it too. They go silent and take up into the air. Their deed is done.

Daryl steps out of the brush and walks on the roadway. He could feel the tension crawl up into his throat and stay there.

"I could've talked her down." Rick grits.

"You always tryin' to save everyone but yourself."

"She could have been one of us. We've been that desperate before or have you forgotten?" Rick admonishes, like he's speaking to the air rather than to Daryl.

They were either angry at each other or comfortably silent, there didn't seem to be anything in between.

Daryl sets his boot to the woman's temple and rips the arrow out to drive his silent point home. Rick clenches his jaw and stalks towards the woods. He lets him get a head start before he tracks his boots through the mud. They're always easy to find. He favored his right side oftentimes.

He wondered how many scars marred Rick's skin. Would they match his? Daryl imagines he was around for the creation of most of them. To him, they've always been like road maps of where they've been and what they'd had to do to keep on trudging through the wasteland.

His tracks veer off into thicker foliage and down a steep incline.

"I ain't about to spend the night chasin' you through the bushes." Daryl says to no one.

 _That was a lie._

The twigs snap and crack at him like bones as he passes through. Why did it always feel like they were moving on? When in truth they were just walking in circles, not venturing too far into the unknown.

Daryl hated Alexandria. He preferred it out here, where things were tangible. He didn't belong in a nice house with a white picket fence. He didn't _want_ to belong there. Daryl knows that he's the town Wolf, a pet they like having around. Rick is more acquainted with the etiquette required but Daryl knows Rick isn't the man he was when this all started. Daryl thinks they leave pieces of themselves behind without meaning to, never to be found. Merle was one of those pieces; scattered.

He hears a grunt and a gurgling screech. It tears him from his ponderings. He jogs forward, crossbow at the ready and he spots Rick finishing a lone walker with his hunting knife. The walker falls to the mud and Rick leans against the trunk of a tree, catching his breath.

Daryl stands there for a moment observing him. He's feeling dangerously open today and it made him especially irritable. Rick just stays there, leaning against that tree, thinking on what's deserved.

Daryl finally approaches him, stepping over the body of the walker. Rick glances at him but the eye contact is fleeting. He's pretty pissed off but that's fine. Daryl can be pissed off too. They can share in this rage together.

"You wanna know what's deserved?" Daryl asks and his voice is louder than he thought it would be. His heart is a drum and the fight is boiling up under his skin. Rick looks at him again in that odd way he often does.

"You breathin'... that's what's deserved. You breathin' here with me now." Daryl confesses.

He watches the fight drain out of Rick, like someone pulled the plug. There's just vulnerability left behind in the wake of it and it sets Daryl even more on edge.

Rick is slowly moving closer to him, as if he's about to tell him the most important thing in the world and Daryl felt transfixed by it. Did he want to hear it? Did he need to?

Rick doesn't say anything though, he just sets his hand gently on Daryl's shoulder and squeezes lightly. They are face to face, breathing the same air. Alive.

His hand moves to grip the collar of Daryl's shirt and Rick watches the dirt below them, a pained expression on his face.

"I ain't about to listen to you tell me what's deserved." Daryl continues but he doesn't really know why he's still speaking. Rick looks up at him again and softly says, "I know."

There's a small moment in time that it dawns on Daryl what's about to happen. He has no time to brace himself for Rick's lips meeting his. The inevitable collide. It isn't anything heated or violent. It's just the soft pressing of lips on his.

It's over before he can blink though and Rick is pulling away, looking disorientated and confused. Daryl is neither of those things. He's calm, calmer than he's been in a long time. Rick doesn't look at him, he just starts forward and makes a gesture to signal he's headed back. Back to Alexandria; where nothing makes sense.

Daryl wasn't about to stop him. If this is Rick's way of coping with whatever _this_ is then he'd let him have it. Daryl accepted it, the way he accepted the woods. They'd always be a part of him, the way Rick always would too.

Even if Rick never came out here with him again, he'd stand here forever reliving that fleeting moment when Daryl was worth more than his crossbow.

The rage he felt earlier had left behind a deeper crueler clarity. The things they loved were never long for this world.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five: Empty Houses**

* * *

The graves crowd beyond the town in morbid symmetry.

There's no burying the dead, they always end up crawling their way towards the sun. Rick uses his hunting knife to dispatch a walker that's flailing on the ground. It lost its legs, messily, some time ago.

The town he's standing in, is half burned down. He knows something _bad_ happened here. The anguish of it, smelled of old seared flesh. Most of it is still standing though, like someone had changed their mind part of the way through.

He spots Daryl, stark against the burnt black of one of the many houses in this silent suburbia. It's been a month since they went scavenging alone together or spent much time together for that matter. Things accumulate in Alexandria and he stores things in the back of his mind. That's when time passes the quickest. Daryl isn't angry at him for it and maybe that makes him feel worse. Lori used to tell him _'Speak'_ and sometimes he doesn't notice that the words don't make their way out of his mouth. He spends his time thinking rather than clucking his tongue. Daryl, however, revels in silence. He understood it the way Rick did.

Rick's boots crunch by a pile of ash and bone. The skeletons projected agony. They experienced a violence no one should. He sees two, side by side with mouths pointed towards the sky. They had been holding one another when the end came for them. He stands there for too long, imagining faces when there are none. He swallows, blinking away the ghosts. It begins to dawn on him that maybe this is Alexandria's future.

He looks up to see that Daryl had disappeared. He didn't like being alone out here. He follows where he thinks Daryl journeyed to and is relieved to see him standing by broken television. His crossbow is comfortably resting in his hands as he examines what's left.

"This was more recent than I would like." Rick says and Daryl casually kicks a pile of crumbling rubble.

"This ain't anythin' new." Daryl shrugs and stands by a blown-out window.

"It's too close to home. Alexandria is ten miles away."

"We best pray then." Daryl comments, sardonically. There's an undercurrent of tension, choking the room and Rick thinks maybe he's angrier than he had initially thought.

"You have somethin' to say?" Rick questions and Daryl slides his eyes over his. They stand there in heated silence before Daryl moves to stand in front of him, his crossbow held down towards the floor.

"There ain't no _home_ for us. Alexandria's a lie. That's how it was supposed to be, not how it is."

Daryl's reply shakes him up, makes him step back as if he's been punched, he might as well have been.

"You think I live in a fantasy? I'm trying to keep us safe." Rick answers and he can't count how many times he's said it. To Shane, to Lori, to everyone in the goddamn universe.

"You think I don't get that? Gettin' too comfortable anywhere is a death sentence." Daryl says and even if the anger still raged beneath, there's an openness to his features that he only ever has with Rick. "There's always some asshole, burnin' up people." Daryl continues. He shuffles his feet in the ash and leans against the wall.

"What do we do then? Just leave? I can't do that to them again." Rick says and turns towards the doorway, it's oddly bright outside. The light is an eerie rusted backdrop.

"There's a reason why houses stay empty is all." Those words of Daryl's bounce around the room, echoing and relentless.

That's the last they speak for some time. They aimlessly scour the house they both know has nothing of value. It served as a reminder. That's the purpose of it. Normalcy is just as unattainable as the stars above.

There's no crows here, nothing to caw at them or mock them from above. It's just dead silent, even the wind seems afraid to howl. All these lost places. Who will remember them? Rick tries to collect it all but after a while things start to blend together. One ruined town after another and then he can't remember what had terrified him in the first place.

"You wanna head back?" Rick calls to Daryl. _You wanna run away?_

Daryl gives him a short nod.

When they walk back to Alexandria, away from that tomb, Rick bumps Daryl's wrist with his. It's a small gesture that doesn't go unnoticed. Daryl reaches out and takes his hand in his. Their fingers interlace and Rick feels heady.

"I can't do this without you." Rick says, softly and his words are taken up into the wind. Thunder rumbles above the trees. There's static in the air, before a lightning strike.

"I ain't goin' nowhere. We goin' to be a couple of old assholes trollin' these roads."

Rick feels himself smile, it had been a while. Daryl gives him a small one back. It's easier than it should be, to just forget what's behind them. It's the reminders. It's Daryl that keeps him sharp, aware and alive.

Rick Grimes knows in another life, one Daryl didn't come walking into, he'd have been a corpse long ago. That wasn't something he'd ever be able to repay but Daryl wasn't about debts or what's owed. He just _was_. He exists and Rick can breathe. Is it really that simple? Maybe so.

Rick stops them on the road, and releases their hands, the warmth falling away from them. Daryl watches him curiously.

"You—" Rick begins but Daryl interrupts, "I know."

Of course he does. He'd never have to speak a word again. Rick nods once and looks out towards the storm that's headed their way. It looked like a mean one, one they'd need shelter for. There's a buzzing inside him like a faulty light bulb. He wasn't ready to head back yet but then again, he never was.

Daryl starts walking first and he follows him all the way back to complacency.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six: Heartbeat**

* * *

It felt like something formidable had finally found them after all this hiding.

They never made it back to Alexandria.

The storm came upon them like a nightmare. It brought torrential rain and wind gusts that almost ripped straight through the Earth. Daryl grabbed Rick's shoulder, pulling him out of the way of a falling dead tree. The branches crack and lightning flashes, blinding them both. They're scrambling in the mud, gripping onto one another and running, blind, through the thick vines. Daryl felt as if he could drown in it all but that hand at his back is enough to keep his focus.

They find a small shack filled with wet hay. It's shaking in the wind and they bust inside. The door slams shut of its own accord by the violence of a gust and they secure it with a wooden board. The storm is too angry for them to hear their shared breathing.

They were both soaked through and Daryl leans against the wall of the shack that's barely holding together. He slides down the wood and sits on the ground, legs outstretched. Rick stands dripping wet in the center of the shack, as if he's preparing to stop the roof from caving in.

"There ain't nothin' we can do!" Daryl yells over the wind. They'd have to ride it out.

Daryl half-expected Rick to join him. They'd sit side by side and listen to the shack crack apart but he doesn't. Rick remains standing there, guarding the door. Daryl wasn't going to ask him to join. He doesn't ask anyone for _anything._ He wasn't about to start now.

It grows darker inside and Daryl watches Rick's still form become a silhouette. The wind is roaring and the lightning snaps close by.

Daryl talks softly to Rick's silhouette. Rick can't hear him; the storm is too loud but he preferred it that way.

"I miss gettin' lost in the dark with you."

The thundering rumble scatters his words as he hoped it would. He timed them appropriately like gunshots.

There's a crack and a flash. He says, "You breathin' beside me is all I need. Everythin' else can go to hell."

Rick's silhouette moves but he doesn't turn to look at Daryl. He'd never admit to it but Daryl commits the image to memory. Rick, standing in that storm-light as if he dreamt him up somehow.

He had wondered for years when it would be their turn but he realizes that it's now. This is their turn. These moments, however fleeting, is their turn. _The now._

Thunder rumbles and splits the sky in two. "I ain't gonna do this without you neither. I never could."

Even though Rick couldn't hear a single word, he still hopes they somehow absorb into his skull; carried across the room by a promise.

Rick turns to him then and Daryl closes his eyes. He listens to his footfalls, crunching across the old hay and feels his shoulder brush against his when Rick finally sits down beside him.

"Wouldn't that'd been somethin'?" Rick asks and Daryl turns his head against the wooden shaky wall to catch his eyes. Rick has a small smile on his face. "To be ripped apart after everythin' by a storm."

Daryl feels a smile pull at his lips as an answer.

For the first time in a long while, Rick looked unburdened. Free. He's soaked through, covered in mud but he felt what Daryl felt. The storm had let time pause, it had given them reprieve, instead of sending them on their final voyage into the Earth.

"Do you think we're meant to be here?" Rick asks him and he has an openness to his eyes that should terrify Daryl but it doesn't.

"We ain't meant to be anywhere."

Rain pounds the roof but the winds weren't raging like they were before. The rhythmic tapping lulls Daryl into a comforting quiet. The rain swirls sideways through the cracks in the wood and the shack creaks with it.

They are still sitting side by side with their heads turned towards one another. Daryl knows Rick wants to kiss him. He can tell. The feeling is infectious; making Daryl feel like a goddamn teenager. Daryl taps his shoe against Rick's absently, barely realizing he's doing it. The shack smells musty, like it crawled up from deep in the dirt. They had unearthed a corner of the old world. Not a pretty one or even one of note but it's here, like they are. Standing against the storm. Without it, they probably would have drowned in the mud.

Rick opens his mouth to speak and just sits there, studying Daryl's face, as if it's worthy of being studied.

"I want to stay a little longer, is that all right?" Rick asks.

"See me arguin'?" Daryl shrugs.

Rick slides across the small space and rests his forehead against Daryl's. There's a disjointed shakiness to his movements. He reaches up and sets his hand on Daryl's face. They are breathing in the same air. Daryl can feel the pads of Rick's callused fingers against his ear.

There's home to be found here.

It didn't matter who they were to the world or who they had been. There are few moments which bind them and even fewer moments of worthy reflection. Daryl has always been good at recognizing the worthiness in the serine.

"I'm sorry." Rick quietly says and Daryl didn't think it was meant for him. The world never deserved Rick's guilt and Daryl would scream it to the clouds, to the rain, if he could.

"This world doesn't deserve it. It never will." Daryl replies.

Rick is always searching for that atonement and if Daryl can help him see that he never needed it in the first place, then that's more than enough.

Daryl doesn't wait any longer, he closes the small space between them and he presses his mouth to Rick's. They grip onto one another like the world is tumbling into that final divide. He's warm, real, alive and a heartbeat of everything.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I'll be continuing this in more of a multi-chapter format and less of a snapshot. I'd consider this a prequel to the continuation fic I'm planning. Thank you for reading!**

 **Chapter Seven: Facade**

* * *

The sun bursts bright in the sky, scaring away what's left of the clouds.

There's something about routine that Rick finds peace in. He's like a lot of people that way. There's something about knowing that tomorrow he'll wake up. He'll open his eyes to the light from the window, dancing on the ceiling.

He'd stand, overlooking the community before him and he'd think about a world long gone, come back to life. Rick sometimes tells Judith bedtime stories about two boys who grew up together in Georgia, who had nothing but routine to look forward to. Most days, that time felt like it belonged to someone else. He created a mausoleum in his skull.

Looking out of that bright window in his bedroom, he spots Daryl then, holding his crossbow. By the looks of it, he just cleaned it. He nods at Rick and Rick nods back. An acknowledgement. _I'm here. I'm always here_

There's an understanding of breath and bone, of the quiet and hearts filled. Rick wants to bask in it. He wants to take to the woods and conquer it, as if he's a young man again. He can't be that person though. He can't be free. He'll never be free like that.

He can't let his head get caught up in thinking of storms and what ifs. He needed to be here, in the now. People counted on him, he never understood why but they did. He had to have the comfort and the answers they needed. There is no room in that for dreams. No room for stolen moments over too soon.

Daryl would understand that, he already did. He watches his back retreat ahead, down the road a ways.

* * *

It's a week later, after a feast the group prepared at Rick's house. Everyone seems content in quiet conversation and Rick makes his way to the kitchen.

Daryl follows in after him and Rick pretends to dry the same coffee cup, again and again.

"It's time for some scavengin'." Daryl says it from behind him. He tenses, closing his eyes.

"I can't." Rick answers and sets down the cup on the clean countertop.

"You can't?" Daryl questions gruffly.

"I'm needed here." Rick says and chances a glance in Daryl's direction. Daryl is squinting at him. The irritation is growing in his stature.

"To play checkers? That's bullshit." Daryl replies.

Rick leans with his palms against the counter and chews on the words for a moment before he finally releases them. "I gotta keep my head outta the clouds."

Daryl sidles up beside him, closer. "I don't see no clouds, just you and me."

Rick knew looking at him now would set him back but he can't help it. His eyes meet Daryl's, absorbing the anger displayed.

Rick lowers his voice, "These people depend on me. I can't be runnin' around in the woods." It hurts him to say it but there it is, out in the open.

"So that's it then?" Daryl asks and shoves Rick's shoulder to get him to face him.

Rick turns, meeting him face to face this time and he swallows from the brunt of it.

"You're a liar, Rick _Grimes_. I can see it in your eyes." Daryl says and points at him with his dirt stained fingers.

Why was it that this man could rip him open? He could destroy Rick if he wanted. Could bring him to the dirt once more but Daryl wasn't a conqueror nor could he be conquered. He's an anomaly. It's like the world created him out of the horizon; made of Earth and sky.

They're breathing together in such a tight space, it's like holding lightning in the palm of his hand. Daryl's anger is dissipating fast and he couldn't take this anymore. He felt like screaming or jumping out of the nearest window, running off into the night as if he's some lunatic taken over by the bright moon. Daryl moves in fast and their lips collide, softer than Rick expected. There's never any violence to them when they're like this. Rick pushes back against the refrigerator and he knocks the coffee cup to the floor shattering it. The glass pieces crunch under their boots and it doesn't matter. It's an afterthought. He rests his hand where Daryl's jaw meets his neck and Daryl's gripping his shirt. He twists his hand into a fist, wrinkling the material, taking out what's left of his frustration. This is where he sets himself and all that he is, in the this shared space; shared breath.

"Dad."

They both break apart, the warmth evaporating. A board creaks in the doorway. Their heads are down and they're facing away from Carl.

"..yes, Carl?" Rick manages and his throat feels raw. He concentrates on the window sill, noticing the tiny knicks in the paint there.

"…nothing, never mind." Carl says, awkwardly and he steps away, his footfalls fading.

Daryl and Rick stand there in the dark kitchen, mirroring each other. There's a nervous urgency to the room now.

"Still have your head in the clouds?" Daryl asks, bitterly.

Rick runs a hand over his face before resting it on his hip, where his gun usually is.

"Daryl…" Rick begins.

"That's what I thought." Daryl grits and heads for the door, flinging it open to the night air.

He was chasing a dream through a wasteland. He has to keep his eyes open, even if he's never been clearer. He'd live and die by that man but he can't do this right now. He can't let go. He can't get lost. Not yet.

Rick makes his way to the living room where Carl is sitting on the couch with his dirty boots and cleaning his gun.

"Did you need somethin'?" Rick asks.

"Nope."

He's in one of his moods and Rick didn't have the patience for it right now. He steps back into the quiet kitchen as if dishes are what he should be doing. He doesn't make a move to do anything though, he's stuck on pause.

Rick knows there's a brutal finality to this world and a fire that's burned every corner of the Earth. Rick knew it through crawling in the mud and bleeding into the palms his hands, that Daryl Dixon is and would forever be the love of his miserable life. However long his life may be.

Why did it have to be here in the darkness?

He finally steps outside and the wind greets him with a gentle caress. He could breathe better out here. It felt more real than anything else.

Rick imagines meeting Daryl before all this and he can't wrap his head around it. As if he was incorporeal, he would have just walked through him, not really seeing. This was the way it had to be. They fought through the darkness to find one another and met as equals.

Rick walks the grounds that night, silently searching for him but if Daryl didn't want to be found he wouldn't be. It was better this way for now. At least that's what he tells himself. He's losing his damn mind over this.

Rick thinks on things like purpose and inevitability; the ruminations thereof. He knows this distance won't last, it never does with them.

"Lose a few marbles or somethin'" The voice comes from behind him and he's drowning in relief.

"I thought you left." Rick says, quick. Daryl shifts his feet, looking beyond him to the gate.

The town is a faded dark backdrop behind Daryl. It's a facade like they're playing house and maybe they are pretending but sometimes that's what keeps the group going. "I just need time is all."

Time is a luxury but it's what he needed.

"I get it. I'll be here, watchin' you get your little paradise in order." Daryl replies but he isn't mocking him. He understands. The complete kind of understanding and that leaves Rick reeling.

He wants to tell him there will be time in future for the woods once they get this community more established but he's not sure that's true, he doesn't want to lie. His chest is filling up with words he'll never use. There's always something down the road that wants to rob them of who they are. Rick knows this and Daryl knows it too.

Rick releases a quiet breath, "I need you…here."

 _With me._

"I ain't never leavin'." Daryl confidently reassures.

This place may end up like all the other burned towns with empty pages left to be filled but Rick had to try. He had to give them a purpose. It's what they asked of him and he couldn't deny them that.

Daryl deserves all things. He's always deserved better. Better than him, better than this world. He doesn't know how to tell him that. He's forgotten how to speak.

"Your heads gonna pop with all those thoughts of yours." Daryl says and Rick gives him a small smile in return.

"I'm sorry." Is all he can manage, all he could ever manage.

"Stop apologizin' for everything and everyone. You do what you gotta." Daryl answers and the night cocoons around them.

"Thank you." He finds Daryl's eyes in the darkness. They're just two hearts beating in tandem.

It's a long while before the woods call them home again.


End file.
